# An American Tragedy — Character guide

> Key figures in An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

- [Clyde Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/clyde_griffiths.md): Clyde grows up dragged from city to city by evangelist parents whose street-corner piety makes him a target for other children's scorn, and the shame of it hardens into a fierce, unformed ambition. He is emotional, roman
- [Roberta Alden](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/roberta_alden.md): Roberta arrives in Lycurgus from a hardscrabble farm family, takes a room in a respectable religious boardinghouse, and finds work in the collar factory where Clyde is her department head. She is cautious, proud, and qui
- [Sondra Finchley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/sondra_finchley.md): Sondra moves at the center of Lycurgus's smart young set, and her notice can lift an outsider into dances, house parties, and summer resorts. She is warm, vain, and generous in her way, drawn to Clyde partly because he i
- [Hortense Briggs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/hortense_briggs.md): Hortense is the pretty, calculating girl in Clyde's bellhop circle, happy to be courted and driven about but never quite his. She wants nice things, admiration, and a better catch, and she plays the boys against each oth
- [Samuel Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/samuel_griffiths.md): Samuel Griffiths is a self-made Lycurgus industrialist, secure in his wealth, his name, and his place among the city's first families. He brings Clyde to Lycurgus out of a half-guilty sense of duty to his estranged broth
- [Gilbert Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/gilbert_griffiths.md): Gilbert is the polished, sharp-tongued young Griffiths who assumes the factory, the fortune, and the social field are his by right. The moment his father mentions a cousin who resembles him, Gilbert bristles with a jealo
- [Asa Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/asa_griffiths.md): Asa Griffiths runs a Kansas City mission with his wife, raising Clyde and three other children in a world of hymns, handouts, and chronic want. When his daughter Esta's scandal breaks, he paces and mutters 'Tst! Tst!' wh
- [Esta Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/esta_griffiths.md): Esta vanishes from the mission with a traveling actor, then returns in disgrace and illness, forcing her mother to scrape together fifty dollars for medical care. The sum lands on Clyde at the exact moment he is hoarding
- [Orville Mason](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/orville_mason.md): Mason is a small-county official with large ambitions, and Clyde's case arrives as the career-making opportunity he has been waiting for. He paints the defendant as a bearded, calculating seducer who traded a poor girl's
- [Alvin Belknap](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/alvin_belknap.md): Belknap is the respectable face of Clyde's defense, a man whose local standing and legal caution are meant to offset Mason's fireworks. He counsels Clyde to sit straight and appear at ease before the writers and sketch a
- [Reuben Jephson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/reuben_jephson.md): Jephson works alongside Belknap to arrange better meals for Clyde and to build a defense that will hinge on motive and intent rather than brute fact. His assurance that the case can be won becomes the thin thread Clyde h
- [Bella Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/bella_griffiths.md): Bella is the pampered daughter of the wealthy Griffiths household, impatient to be treated as grown and accustomed to her father's indulgence. She moves easily through the Lycurgus society that Clyde can only glimpse, an
- [Thomas Ratterer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/thomas_ratterer.md): Ratterer is Clyde's co-worker at the Green-Davidson and the doorway to a looser world: his mother's house, where young people pair off under a mother's startling indifference. He is generous, unpretentious, and entirely 
- [Oscar Hegglund](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/oscar_hegglund.md): A bellhop colleague of Clyde in Chicago.
- [Walter Dillard](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/dillard.md): A bellhop acquaintance of Clyde.
- [Willard Sparser](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/sparser.md): A friend of Clyde's from his hotel days.
- [Myra Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/myra_griffiths.md): Clyde's younger sister.
- [Jill Trumbull](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/jill_trumbull.md): A socialite friend of Sondra Finchley.
- [Bertine Cranston](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/bertine_cranston.md): A wealthy young woman in Lycurgus society.
- [Titus Alden](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/titus_alden.md): Roberta's father, a poor farmer.
- [Louise Ratterer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/louise_ratterer.md): Thomas Ratterer's sister.
- [Fred Heit](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/fred_heit.md): A coroner involved in the investigation.
- [Duncan McMillan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/duncan_mcmillan.md): McMillan is a country reverend drawn into Clyde's cell by duty and, gradually, by a genuine, unsettling compassion for the condemned. Where the law sees a case and the press a monster, he sees a soul struggling to confes
- [Orrin Short](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/orrinshort.md): A friend of Clyde's from his hotel days.
- [Earl Newcomb](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/earl_newcomb.md): A bellhop colleague of Clyde.
- [Stuart Finchley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/stuart_finchley.md): Sondra's brother.
- [Rita Dickerman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/rita_dickerman.md): A young woman Clyde becomes involved with in Lycurgus.
- [Burton Burleigh](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/burton_burleigh.md): A detective who investigates Roberta's death.
- [Greta Miller](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/greta_miller.md): A friend of Roberta's at the factory.
- [Grant Cranston](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/grant_cranston.md): A wealthy young man in Lycurgus society.
- [Darrah Brookhart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/darrah_brookhart.md): A businessman in Lycurgus.
- [Joshua Whiggam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/joshua_whiggam.md): A factory worker at the collar company.
- [Arthur Kinsella](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/arthur_kinsella.md): A detective involved in the case.
- [Miller Nicholson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/miller_nicholson.md): A lawyer who assists the prosecution.
- [Harley Baggott](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/harley_baggott.md): A young man in Lycurgus society.
- [Julia Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/julia_griffiths.md): Clyde's aunt, Samuel Griffiths' wife.
- [Zella Shuman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/zella_shuman.md): A friend of Roberta's at the factory.
- [Elvira Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/elvira_griffiths.md): Elvira Griffiths is a street-corner evangelist in Kansas City, raising her children on hymns, handouts, and the conviction that her family is spiritually set apart. Proud, self-sacrificing, and blind to how her public pi
- [Emily Griffiths](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/emily_griffiths.md): Clyde's younger sister.
- [Martha Bordaloue](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/martha_bordaloue.md): A woman who testifies at the trial.
- [Violet Taylor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/violet_taylor.md): A young woman in Lycurgus.
- [Larry Doyle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/larry_doyle.md): A man who testifies at Clyde's trial.
- [George Newton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters/george_newton.md): A man in Lycurgus society.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/an_american_tragedy_se/characters